1,600 Pandas World Tour

Before arriving in Korea, we have already heard of the 1,600 pandas made of papier-mâché by a French artist Paulo Grangeon, going around the world especially in the land of the morning calm, South Korea. So why 1,600? It is the number of existing pandas left in the wild. Thus, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) developed this project to promote awareness.

Too excited, we arrived a day early in 동대문디자인플라자 (Dongdaemun Design Plaza or DDP). Hence, we looked around the space ship-like structure. Here are some of my photos:

The next day, we came back at around 2pm. Some volunteers were still dispersing the pandas under the white LED roses and the area was already full of people. We squeezed ourselves in to every space where we could just to take some snaps and here are the photos I got:

We followed them at the 123-floor skyscraper Lotte World Tower, which will be the tallest building in Seoul once finished. Although, the tower is currently under construction, they accommodated the 1,600 paper pandas in the vicinity for a month.

We noticed there were already big, regular and small sizes pandas unlike when we first saw them in Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP).

After seeing the pandas, we had a quick walk around Seokchon Lake Park (석촌호수공원). People were just strolling while others were jogging around the track and exercising using the facilities provided by the government.

We also spotted some pandas in the area having picnic and playing a traditional instrument called janggo or janggu (장고 or 장구).